Developing a sense of racial justice and becoming a leader in the field

Wright recalls how he developed his sense of racial justice and eventually assumed the South Carolina presidency of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, launching a lifetime of activism. He remembers the violent racism of a former employer and his first brush with racial etiquette, when a sister told him he could no longer play with his black friends. These experiences and his natural anti-authoritarianism led him to try to undo segregation.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Marion Wright, March 8, 1978. Interview B-0034. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

How did you happen to
become state President of the Interracial Commission?

MARION WRIGHT:

It had existed for a very short while, and I had never attended a
meeting. But the President, who was a lawyer named Mr. Beverly Herbert,
called me over the phone and wanted to know if I would accept the
presidency of the Commission. And I told him without hesitancy that I
would. And I was already somewhat known as being a radical on that
issue, so he assumed from that fact that I would accept the presidency,
which I did.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And had you gotten that reputation mainly because of your activities as a
student in your commencement address?

MARION WRIGHT:

I made two or three speeches. I think, looking back on it, I did so as
much because of the fact that it gave me a certain fame or notoriety or
something of that sort. But I was a solid convert. Dr. Josiah Morse, a
professor of philosophy who taught me, was a firm believer in the
equality of mankind in general, so I did have a fervor that was sincere.
Being a college boy at the time and being seventeen or eighteen years
old, the glamour of speaking perhaps influenced me somewhat.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I had the impression from what you said before that those years at
college were really the decisive turning point, that you seem to have
had fairly conventional views toward race and religion and so on until
that college experience.

MARION WRIGHT:

I think that would have been true to a large extent. I saw instances of
abuse of blacks which I deeply resented, and to that extent I was in
favor of better treatment. An incident that I can
recall where my indignation was aroused occurred in the store of a man
named Walter Wise at Trenton. I was a clerk there before going to
college. And on one occasion the train from the north brought in, among
other passengers, a black man who was quite well dressed. There was a
connecting line between the train from the north, a smaller line which
ran from Aiken to Edgefield. So the northerners who were then making
Aiken their point for winter hunting and that kind of thing would bring
Negro servants with them, so I'm sure this man had come down in that
capacity. The Northerners had to bring their polo ponies, also. This
black man had to wait to catch the train to Aiken. There was some delay.
He came in from Columbia and had to wait for this small shuttle line
that went to Aiken. So he came over to the store and said he would like
to wash his hands. We kept a basin in the back of the store, and I got
him that basin and some soap and a towel. And about the time that he was
performing his ablutions, the owner of the store, Mr. Walter Wise, came
in, and went berserk, almost. He grabbed a buggy whip. There was a rack
of buggy whips for sale, so he grabbed one of those and shouted
something about a "goddam nigger using my washpan"
[laughter]
and ran the Negro out of the store. I recall distinctly that the
man hid behind the Presbyterian Church. Mr. Wise came back and lectured
me for a long time about race relations. Finally when the shuttle train
came in, going to Aiken, I saw this man creep out and get on that train.
This Negro was probably better dressed than any citizen of Trenton, and
that probably was one reason for the hostility.
[Laughter]
He had an air about him that perhaps made you feel uncomfortable
in the assumption that you were superior. So this happened in my youth.
Then as a small boy I hunted and played with Negroes. That was more or
less the custom in the South at that time. I played with them without
the slightest self-consciousness on the part of any of us until I
reached, I presume, the age of puberty, when my sister called me aside
and told me that I must stop that kind of thing, that boys of my age
didn't run around with colored boys of that age. I know I resented that.
So these things merely mean that I had some feeling of resentment at the
way Negroes were treated. I daresay not a person in that community ever
thought of a Negro as being a citizen; it was always a
master-and-servant relationship, and a very comfortable one for the
master, as you may imagine.

JACQUELYN HALL:

It sounds as if you were sort of naturally rebellious, too, in addition
to feeling a certain indignation about blacks, that you were a little
rebellious toward authority.

MARION WRIGHT:

I think I was born a rebel. It not only showed itself a little bit later
in my attitude toward blacks, but my attitude toward the church, also.
As would be customary with practically all children at that time, you
went to church and joined during some soul-fermenting revival when they
had an evangelist there. So I joined under such circumstances at
what was known as a protracted meeting. But I
left Trenton at age sixteen.
The family probably welcomed my going off to college. Then at college I
came under the influence of larger personalities than I had met, and a
Jewish professor of philosophy who never let his Judaism intrude on his
teachings at all. But he fully implanted the idea that what I had
theretofore believed, or what people of my circle believed, was fairly
primitive. So, in a wrash moment, I wrote the Trenton Methodist Church
to take my name off their roll.
[Laughter]
And I guess they did it.